The Best Online Sources For Images

Jeez, there are sure a ton of ways to find images on the Web, as well as many places where you can find lengthy link lists to image collections.

I’d lay odds that most people, including myself, just use Google Image Search when they need to find an image. However, there might be instances when you want to use another tool — perhaps you’re a language teacher searching for just the right clip art or photography to illustrate a verb, maybe you have very young students and are concerned about what they might find on Google, possibly you’re particularly teaching about copyright issues, or you want your students to easily connect an image to a writing exercise and have them send an E-Card. (Google has recently added an option in their advanced image search feature — go to the bottom left under “license” and choose “labeled for reuse”)

I thought a “The Best…” list might be helpful in one of those, or other particular, instances.

So here are my picks for The Best Online Sources For Images (not in order of preference):

Search by Creative Commons provides excellent explanations about what Creative Commons licenses are, and offers a way to search throughout the web for images that have them.

Flickr Storm is search tool
to find Flickr images offered for use with a Creative Commons license (be sure to click “Advanced Search” to make sure your results include only those with a CC license).

PicFindr lets you search many photo sites simultaneously and, in addition to defining the image you want, you can define the restrictions for use. For example, I typed in that I was looking for a picture of a lion for educational use, checked the “none” box for licensing requirements (which means anybody can use it — even without crediting the photographer) and got several hundred images to choose from.

I’m adding Wikimedia Commons to this list. It has four million images, and their reuse agreement states:

almost all may be freely reused without individual permission according to the terms of the particular license under which it was contributed to the project. Depending on what you want to do with it, you probably do not need to obtain a specific statement of permission from the Licensor.

Free Foto: “Freefoto is made up of 117,600 images with over 150+ sections organized into 3,285 categories. There’s a search function, and usage is completely unrestricted. All you have to do is include an attribution link back to Freefoto.com.”

Free Digital Photos: “Free Digital Photos has a good search function, which is very important when you’ve got this many images under one resource. Photos are nicely grouped into categories for easy and quick browsing.”

Public Domain Photos: “Public Domain Photos is exactly that: a photographer’s domain for public display, all arranged by corresponding categories. There’s a really good search function available, as well.”

Free Historical Stock Photos: “Free Historical Stock Photos contains various historical images, including many by Matthew Brady (Civil War) and Dorothea Lange (Great Depression). This site also includes paintings and vintage posters. The images are gracefully categorized and easily findable with the use of a search function.”

Heritage Explorer has hundreds of thousands of British-related images available for free educational use. You can read more about it at the Kent ICT blog.

World Images, according to its site, is a “database that provides access to the California State University IMAGE Project. It contains almost 75,000 images, is global in coverage and includes all areas of visual imagery. WorldImages is accessible anywhere and its images may be freely used for non-profit educational purposes.”

Mashable has just posted a great piece, 26 Places to Find Free Multimedia for Your Blog. I’ve already included in this post many of the resources they list. However, they also listed some sites that are new to me, especially the ones that have freely-available video. I’m also sure that a ton of additional sources will be accumulating in their comments section. Because of that, for now, instead of just selectively adding some of their sites to my lists, I’m going to include a link to their post here.

All Our Stock has a bunch royalty-free images, and looks pretty good to me.

Free Clip Art by Phillip Martin seems to be a pretty impressive site for clip art that’s free for non-profit use. The art seems a cut above many other clip art sites I’ve seen, and appropriate for many subject areas (that’s how they are categorized).

I’m adding these sites to the list (neither require attribution for their photos though, of course, that would be a nice thing to do):

Wylio is a new site for bloggers to find photos for their blogs. In seconds, it finds a Flickr Creative Commons photo, resizes it to exactly what you need, and provides an embed code, which automatically includes an attribution to the photographer..

Free Images has 6000 original stock photos — all you have to do is credit the site when you use them.

The Noun Project “collects, organizes and adds to the highly recognizable symbols that form the world’s visual language, so we may them in a fun and meaningful way.” It’s really quite an impressive collection.

PD Photo has many photos, with the vast majority being in the public domain.

Yale University has one of the larger collections of art, objects and documents of any organization in the U.S. Now, digital images and audio files of the collection are free to access by anyone in the world online, according to an announcement by the university’s communications office.

Yale Digital Commons has debuted with just under 260,000 images. The idea is to encompass the whole of the university’s collections in time.

Kozzi has thousands of royalty-free images that can be used for anything — at no charge — without even having to give them attribution. You have sign-up for the site, but registration is free.

PhotoPin is new search engine for Creative Commons images. It has a very nice interface, and I especially like it because you not only get the photos, but it also gives you the exact attribution to copy and paste. Thanks to TechCrunch for the tip, and you can read more about the site at their post.

Earlier in this post, I briefly describe how to search for images on Google that are licensed for “reuse.” Google says if you use it, its “results will only include pages that are either labeled as public domain or carry a license that allows you to copy or redistribute its content, as long as the content remains unchanged.”

This site contains hundreds of visual aids (illustrations) that can be used to support instructional tasks such as describing objects and people (i.e., teaching vocabulary) or describing entire events and situations (i.e., teaching grammar).

Thanks to a tweet by Eric Sheninger, I learned about Photo Pin. It’s a search engine for Creative Commons images from Flickr, and you’re provided with the code you can copy and paste underneath the photo when you use it that provides the appropriate attribution.

I just learned about Image Code from Wesley Fryer. It lets you search Flickr from Creative Commons’ licensed images, get the url address of the photo you want to use, and then turns it into a code you can copy and paste into your blog or website with all the attribution already in it. For example, I searched for lion, found a photo I wanted to use, and here’s what it came up with:

Richard Byrne has discovered an easy way to search for public domain images on the Bing search engine, and he’s got a simple screenshot on his blog that shows you how. Personally, my favorite place these days to find images for this blog is Wylio. It’s super simple to use and works very well giving you the appropriate attribution within its embed code. You get five images a month for free, and then have to pay less than $40 per year for using more. I think it’s worth it.

The initial focus of the Open Content Program is to make available all images of public domain artworks in the Getty’s collections. we’ve taken a first step toward this goal by making roughly 4,600 high-resolution images of the Museum’s collection free to use, modify, and publish for any purpose.

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